South Korean retail investors extended their net buying streak in U.S. equities to two consecutive weeks, deploying more than $800 million. However, stock selection showed a clear shift: investors exited semiconductor names en masse\u2014excluding Nvidia\u2014while concentrating buying in a pharmaceutical company that announced cancer vaccine clinical success and cryptocurrency-related stocks.<\/p>\n
According to the Korea Securities Depository’s SEIBro, South Korean retail investors net purchased $802.12 million (approximately 1.1 trillion won) in U.S. stocks from August 20 to 26 (settlement dates August 24\u201328). This followed the prior week’s net buying of $986.81 million (approximately 1.4 trillion won), sustaining the buying bias.<\/p>\n
During the same period, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell 0.4% and 0.8%, respectively, though the final two trading days of the week\u2014August 27 and 28\u2014saw rebounds of 0.5% and 1.0%, partially restoring investor sentiment.<\/p>\n
The most pronounced buying flowed into Merck. The pharmaceutical company announced on August 19 (U.S. Eastern Time) that its personalized mRNA cancer vaccine, co-developed with Moderna, succeeded in Phase 3 clinical trials. South Korean retail investors net purchased $99.95 million (approximately 140 billion won) of Merck, making it the top buy of the week.<\/p>\n
An interesting detail: net buying of co-development partner Moderna totaled just $9.44 million (approximately 13 billion won)\u2014less than one-tenth of the Merck figure. This is attributed to heavy profit-taking by existing holders after Moderna’s stock soared 177% on the day of the announcement, which made chasing the rally a daunting prospect. Merck’s stock rose 12.6% the same day.<\/p>\n
As a weaker dollar drove bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices sharply higher, related names returned to the top of the net-buying list for the first time in a while. Strategy, the publicly traded company with the largest bitcoin holdings, attracted $83.28 million (approximately 110 billion won), while BitMine Immersion Technologies, the largest publicly traded holder of Ethereum, saw inflows of $46.21 million (approximately 63 billion won). These stocks have risen 30.3% and 31.6%, respectively, over the past month.<\/p>\n
With U.S. markets fluctuating without clear direction, dividend investing also regained attention. The Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF (SCHD) recorded $65 million (approximately 89 billion won) in net buying, re-entering the top 10 net-buy list for the first time in about four months.<\/p>\n
SpaceX attracted $64.32 million (approximately 88 billion won), maintaining its position in the top net-buy rankings for a fourth consecutive week. Its stock has traded in a range of $135\u2013$145 (approximately 180,000\u2013200,000 won) since mid-August. Alphabet Class A posted $54.89 million (approximately 75 billion won) in net buying, appearing in the top ranks for a third straight week. South Korean retail investors have been steadily accumulating this stock since mid-July, but the share price has languished around $340 (approximately 470,000 won) after plunging on the departure of Jeff Dean\u2014considered a key figure in AI\u2014and a large corporate bond issuance.<\/p>\n
Index-tracking ETFs also drew inflows. The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) saw $54.58 million (approximately 75 billion won) in net buying, while the ProShares Ultra QQQ ETF (QLD) and ProShares UltraPro QQQ ETF (TQQQ), which track 2x and 3x the daily return of the Nasdaq-100, recorded net purchases of $44.98 million (approximately 62 billion won) and $52.41 million (approximately 72 billion won), respectively.<\/p>\n
Nvidia, which was set to report earnings, attracted $50.51 million (approximately 69 billion won). This marked the first time Nvidia appeared in the top 10 net-buy list since the week of May 28\u2013June 3, roughly three months earlier. The stock surged 8.7% on August 27, the day after its earnings release, but fell 4.6% on August 28, underscoring its volatility.<\/p>\n
In contrast, selling was pronounced across semiconductor names excluding Nvidia. Among the top 10 net-sold stocks, positions one through six were all semiconductor-related.<\/p>\n
The most heavily sold stock was Applied Materials, a semiconductor equipment maker, with $130.97 million (approximately 180 billion won) in net selling. The company’s stock has plunged 36.1% over two months since peaking on June 30.<\/p>\n
Memory chip makers Micron Technology and SK Hynix ADR saw net selling of $72.41 million (approximately 99 billion won) and $69.26 million (approximately 95 billion won), respectively. AMD, which produces CPUs and GPUs, recorded $43.25 million (approximately 59 billion won) in net selling, while SanDisk, a NAND flash memory and storage device maker, posted $42.72 million (approximately 58 billion won). Silicon Motion Technology ADR, Taiwan’s leading NAND flash controller company, was also net sold to the tune of $38.03 million (approximately 52 billion won).<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Microsoft saw $32.80 million (approximately 45 billion won) in net selling, and the SPDR Portfolio Intermediate Term Corporate Bond ETF (SPIB), which invests in U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds, posted $29.77 million (approximately 41 billion won). The Direxion Daily South Korea Bull 3X ETF (KORU), which tracks 3x the daily return of the MSCI Korea 20\/50 Index, and Palantir Technologies were also net sold by $29.67 million (approximately 41 billion won) and $25.37 million (approximately 35 billion won), respectively.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, South Korean retail investors’ return to U.S. equities extends beyond weekly figures to a two-month trend. From July 1 through August 27, net purchases of U.S. stocks reached $7.04 billion (approximately 9.6 trillion won). This exceeds the 8.75 trillion won (approximately $6.4 billion) in net buying on the KOSPI over the same period. Retail investors who had returned to the domestic market in April\u2013May due to capital gains tax reduction benefits pivoted back to U.S. equities starting in June, adding $4.64 billion (approximately 6.4 trillion won) in July and another $2.40 billion (approximately 3.3 trillion won) through August 28.<\/p>\n
The stock that attracted the most capital over the two-month span was SOXL, an ETF that tracks 3x the daily return of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, with net purchases reaching $3.01 billion (approximately 4.1 trillion won)\u2014more than 40% of total net buying. SK Hynix ADR attracted $815.42 million (approximately 1.1 trillion won), while Alphabet and SpaceX drew $647.17 million (approximately 890 billion won) and $514.96 million (approximately 700 billion won), respectively. On the sell side, Nvidia saw $748.90 million (approximately 1 trillion won) in net selling, Palantir $615.40 million, Micron $353.93 million, and Microsoft $322.30 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korean retail investors extended their net buying streak in U.S. equities to two consecutive weeks, deploying more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4787,10503,16501,7356,171,17212,3534,48308,2295,275,25678,1319],"class_list":["post-137933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-alphabet","tag-applied-materials","tag-bitmine-immersion-technologies","tag-korea-securities-depository","tag-korean","tag-merck","tag-micron-technology","tag-moderna","tag-nvidia","tag-sk-hynix","tag-spacex","tag-strategy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}